tims@shark.UUCP (Tim Stoehr) (01/09/84)
When I was a student at UC Berkeley, I took a lower division, general
information course in Women's Studies, which is a valid major
discipline there. During this class I heard many, many complaints
women had against men. Two that stand out are as follows:
1.) Men do not know what women think and how they feel and, hence,
should not be allowed to administer women's lives.
2.) Women are extremely varied intellectually, socially, economically,
emotionally, etc., etc., and, hence, cannot be judged as a group.
Both of these points I agree with and are consistent with my
experiences over the years. Now, what really makes me wonder
is this discussion in net.women in which I hear complaints that
men can't or don't respond appropriately to subtle signals.
UNDER MOST CIRCUMSTANCES, IT IS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE ANY
INFERENCES FROM THESE SUBTLE SIGNS. How on earth could a man
be sure of such things when each and every women on this earth
treats and deals with men in a different way, with ABSOLUTELY
NO COMMON GROUND BETWEEN THEIR BEHAVIOR.
If their are any faults of men for misreading subtle cues, then
women have some equivalent fault for using them. One thing is
for sure, subtle cues are not totally effective, and if you use
them, you must keep this fact in mind, and accept the results.
If a women wants effective communication with a man, she should
be direct, no matter what their relationship is.
I would greatly appreciate such behavior, although I feel that the
majority of women will never employ it. Why? For reasons that
apply to men as well as women; it hurts more to get rejected from
a direct, rather than subtle, advance, and it doesn't feel nice to
have to directly reject a person and maybe hurt his/her feelings.
The point is, don't expect men to be mindreaders, they can't any
more than women can. Direct actions are appropriate if you
want effective communication. It's not easy to be direct in this
manner, but if you are too shy to be direct, you will have
communication problems.features@ihuxf.UUCP (e) (01/11/84)
For a member of a minority group, there is a distinct advantage to using the subtle (as opposed to overt) signals. When the majority member takes exception to the signal, the minority can say that the signals were misunderstood. To be able to speak freely, without hesitation or fear of reprisal, one has to be in a more equal relationship. Sad to say, that is not the case with most male-female relationships in a patriarchal society. M. A. Zeszutko AT&T Bell Labs Naperville, IL
steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (01/11/84)
All this reminds me of a venerable old saying: Subtleties are oft misunderstood. Steven Maurer
tjt@kobold.UUCP (01/11/84)
As long as the issue of "being subtle" isn't quite closed, I'll put in
my two cents worth (or rather my wife's two cents worth): she agrees
that women *are* better at communicating via subtle signals and often
points out to me (after the fact) that some seeming compliment was
really a backhanded insult. I'm not better at interpreting positive
subtle communication: soon after we met and she asked me to help her
with her physics homework, my response was to refer her to other people
in the class who knew the material better than me, and lived closer to
her.
My impression is that this is just the other half of "games mother
didn't teach you" so the problem may not be that men are better or
worse at using subtle communication, but rather that they learn
different subtle languages.
--
Tom Teixeira, Massachusetts Computer Corporation. Westford MA
...!{ihnp4,harpo,decvax,ucbcad,tektronix}!masscomp!tjt (617) 692-6200